4.  The applicant company is the editorial body of a limited liability company called the Ukraina-Tsentr Newspaper and is registered in the city of Kirovograd, Ukraine.
5.  In June 2002 the mayoral elections were conducted in the city of Kirovograd. On 12 June 2002, during the election campaign, two press conferences relating to those elections were held at the Ukrainian Independent News Agency (“the UNIAN”). During one of those press conferences, a local Kirovograd journalist, Mr M. accused one of the candidates, Mr Y., of ordering him to be murdered for 5,000 US dollars (USD). The wording of the accusation made by Mr M., as later established by the domestic courts, contained the following paragraph:
“He (Mr Y.) went to his friend, the one locally known politician, whom I will not name yet, but if necessary we will provide [his name], we have facts. Upon his request, the other took out five thousand dollars of his money and handed it to his head of security service and said the following, that it is necessary to reserve for me a place in the morgue.
So, at present, they “ordered” me for five thousand dollars. Who ordered? I say: [Mr] Y. [full name], I declare it officially.”
6.  This information among other news was disseminated by the UNIAN via e-mail and posted on its website. According to the applicant company, it received this information by electronic mail in the following form:
“Furthermore, [Mr] M. accused the Kirovograd mayoral candidate and President of the Kirovskiy District Court, [Mr] V. Y., “of ordering him to be murdered”. The journalist reported that for safety reasons he had taken his family away from the region. According to him, all four journalists participating in the press conference addressed the General Prosecutor's Office, the Security Service of Ukraine and the Ministry of the Interior concerning the threats to them and claimed that they had proof of pressure being applied to them”.
7.  According to the applicant company, on the same day, the STB TV channel in its Vikna-Novyny news programme disseminated similar information, indicating that Mr M. had also mentioned the sum of USD 5,000 for “ordering him to be murdered”.
8.  On 14 June 2002 the applicant company published an article which was titled “The metropolitan tour” in which the above-mentioned press conferences of 12 June 2002 were described. Among other things, the article contained the following paragraph:
“[Mr] M. accused [Mr] Y. of 'ordering him to be murdered' and even stated the amount paid for the 'order' – 5,000 US dollars. The journalist stated that for safety reasons he had taken his family away from the region. According to him, all four journalists participating in the press conference addressed the General Prosecutor's Office, the Security Service of Ukraine and the Ministry of the Interior concerning the threats to them. He also claimed that they had proof of the pressure being applied to them.”
9.  In August 2002 Mr Y. lodged a civil claim in the Kirovograd Leninsky District Court (the Leninsky Court) against the applicant company and Mr M. complaining that the phrase “[Mr] M. accused [Mr] Y. 'of ordering him to be murdered' and even stated the amount paid for the 'order' – 5,000 US dollars” published by the applicant company was untrue and abased his human dignity. He maintained that that publication had affected his professional and private life and damaged his reputation as an individual, lawyer and politician. Taking the view that the publishing of a correction would not be sufficient, he asked the courts to pay him non-pecuniary damages. Later, Mr Y. supplemented his claim by asking for the statement made by Mr M. during the press conference (see paragraph 5 above) to be found untrue and defamatory.
10.  According to the applicant company, its co-defendant, Mr M., asked the court to adjourn the proceedings and on 30 November 2002 asked the Supreme Court to transfer the case to another court. The applicant company supported those requests. In his request to the Supreme Court, Mr M. noted in particular that the plaintiff was the President of the Kirovograd Kirovskiy Local Court and therefore, to ensure the objective and unbiased examination of the case, he asked for the case to be transferred to one of the local courts in Kyiv, the city in which the press conference had taken place. By letter dated 12 December 2002, the Deputy President of the Supreme Court allowed the request in part and ordered the case to be transferred to the Kamyansky Local Court in the Cherkassy region. However, by that time, the Leninsky Court had already examined the case (see the next paragraph), having rejected Mr M.'s request for the case to be adjourned.
11.  On 10 December 2002 the Leninsky Court, in a single judge formation (Judge B.) found that the accusations made by Mr M. and the applicant company that Mr Y. had ordered Mr M. to be murdered were contrary to the principle of the presumption of innocence guaranteed by the Constitution. The defendants did not prove before the court that the disseminated information was true. The court found the following phrase from the applicant company's article “[Mr] M. accused [Mr] V. Y. 'of ordering him to be murdered' and noted the amount paid for the 'order' – 5,000 US dollars” untrue and defamatory. The court also found that Mr M. had accused Mr Y. of 'ordering' him to be murdered for USD 5,000 during the press conference and that such accusation was also untrue and defamatory. The court noted that, in view of the fact that the two bodies had not drawn up a formal contract between them, the applicant company could not prove that it had received the impugned information officially from the UNIAN. Furthermore, the information published by the applicant company did not correspond to the information disseminated by the UNIAN. For those reasons, the court concluded that the applicant company could not be protected against liability. The applicant company and Mr M. were ordered to pay Ukrainian hryvnias 100,000 (UAH) and UAH 20,000, respectively, in compensation. The court, however, found no liability against the UNIAN, which had been identified as a co-defendant by the court, because the plaintiff had lodged no claims against it and the UNIAN had published a correction.
12.  The applicant company appealed against the decision of the first-instance court. It complained, in particular, that Judge B. could not be impartial because Mr Y. was the chairman of the regional council of judges and the deputy chairman of the regional branch of the Union of Lawyers and, as a judge and a lawyer, Judge B. was dependent upon the plaintiff. The applicant company further noted that the court had disregarded the fact that the impugned information had been circulated by electronic mail, had also been freely accessible on the UNIAN website and that such information belonged in the public domain. It also submitted that the plaintiff had not asked it to correct the material and its proposal to publish a correction before the judicial proceedings and during the judicial proceedings had been refused by the plaintiff.
13.  On 12 March 2003 the Kirovograd Regional Court of Appeal upheld the decision of the first-instance court but decreased the compensation award. The applicant company was ordered to pay UAH 50,000 in compensation.
14.  The applicant company appealed in cassation.
15.  On 2 October 2003 the Supreme Court upheld the decisions of the lower courts.
16.  On 30 October 2003 the applicant company paid the compensation awarded against it and UAH 2,500 in enforcement fees.